Fell for TopSEOs...advice?

[AmieMarse]

I'm so embarrassed I could just spit, but instead I am seeking some friendly advice. I run ContentEqualsMoney.com, a copywriting company. We've been in business for just over a year and have done incredibly well. Of course, we do SEO copywriting but really focus on content marketing as a system for our clients.

So last month I got a random call from TopSEOs.com. I remember looking at their site last year but didn't put much thought into it. When they called, my ears perked at the pitch. They could submit our site for ranking and we would only pay if we were found in the top ten. I thought - what the heck, what are the chances my site would rank. I checked them out on opensiteexplorer and saw they had crazy SEO juice so happy times.

Then last week I saw the charge on our company credit card, sure enough we had made it to the top ten in SEO copywriting. I was flabbergasted but happy as a clam.

So yesterday I check out their site and we were ranked #1 for SEO Copywriting. For about two seconds I was jumping for joy...but after that I got sick to my stomach. In all the chaos with end of year stuff and the holidays I never considered the fact that they didn't take any references. They never evaluated anything. Here we were ranked #1 and they couldn't possibly know anything about us. Not to mention that there are plenty of more established SEO Copywriting companies. I'm starting to freak out...

I looked at my "competition" and buzzwrite.com (ranked #9) doesn't even exist anymore.

So I searched for "topseos scam" and found a wealth of info from 2009 and 2010. I feel like such an idiot. We thought we were paying for an evaluation process but I guess we just got hosed for a ludicrous ranking.

Now I don't know what to do. I want to hide under a rock. Do I need to worry about losing authority cred for being on this site? Should I tell them to keep the money but take my profile off their site asap? Or should I just keep my head down, see if any leads generate and then make sure to not pay them any additional monies?

I was going to ask this privately but if my stupidity can help anybody else avoid these people that would make me feel less like upchucking.

Thanks!

[GKLA]

I'm glad I stumbled on this post.

I strongly believe that their should be a disclaimer on sites that rank other companies services who pay for the listings.  In this case, unsuspecting business owners searching for a bona-fide SEO company can be easily misled by choosing a company with a top rank - when in fact the only way the rank was achieved was by paying for it.

Any credibility in my opinion of the site accepting payment for a listing as well as the site paying for the listing  - is thrown out the window.

[AmieMarse]

Just wanted to update anybody that randomly found this question

We got a slight bump in traffic from Top SEOs the first week, but then nothing. So for us it wouldn't have been worth the money even if it wasn't a bit slimy. All around a bad move

[onlinemediadirect]

We have recently had dealings with Top SEO's and it can be a bit of a midfield. We do offer a genuinely good ethical service. We want to gain more client so when they got in touch we were like what the hell they are offering it for free for the first month so we did it. The second month they wanted a fee which we paid as it does work and we got a regular flow of inquiries.

But hey I am as annoyed as anyone with the whole system paying to get listed is so annoying ! But the rankings do work so you left with the though - Should I just play the game and go for it ??

What annoys me is I know people ranked for seo in the Uk in the top spots are perhaps not offering as good a service and they could... thats as far as I will go with that....

But companies want to hear the bumf ! They want chunky 30 page proposals.. Full of you guessed it unspecific bumf.

Rant over

[AmieMarse]

Thanks! I appreciate the quick response More than anything I am just crazy embarrassed for not researching this ahead of time.  If I would have known it was just a paid listing I would have ignored it. I wanted some quality backlinks but oh well... You are right though - plenty of potential clients aren't going to know about the controversy anyway. And I know that with us, they won't get terrible service. I'm going to go with keep our head down and let the leads come in. We're not going to broadcast our rankings outside of topseos (other than this post, lol) so it shouldn't get too hairy.

Thanks again

[ResslerMotors]

I think it could generate quite a few leads for you.  Even though there is quite the controversy over their ranking factors (I've read money is the main one a few times), I've talked to quite a few companies who said that they receive quite a few leads from it.

Here's how I would look at it:

• People outside of the SEO business are going to go there to find talent (because there isn't really any other place that offers rankings).
• People in the business aren't going to hire you unless they know you.  You are going to generate these leads by attending conferences, meetings and other social activities.

I would just let it ride, and see what comes.  You probably couldn't get your money back anyways, so just enjoy the marketing